Peel Back
by KitschMiro
Summary: On the eve of her wedding, Jacob left, and Bella ran. Years later, they return.
1. She returns

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

* * *

_The white pearls_

_Fallen on my sleeves with heart still full_

_We parted_

_I take them with me_

_As a memory of you_

_(Kokinshu)_

She stared at the white-washed house with its red shingles, hydrangea bushes, and warm yellow lights with trepidation. It has been too long, she thought nervously, silently cursing herself for accepting the invitation at all. So what if it _was_ an hour long cross-country phone call with Emily's soft caramel voice trickling nostalgia and guilt through the earpiece until all Bella felt was the wind of First Beach on her face, the rough sinewy feel of forest underbrush under her feet, and the scent of fresh cobbler waffling tauntingly about her. What if her heart did jolt when she first saw the number flashing obnoxiously on her screen: a dastard combination of a too-familiar area code followed by a strange string of ominous numbers. It didn't even matter that while mumbling distractedly to herself that "it's not Charlie" what her mind really wanted to say (and her heart screamed) was the name that had haunted her the first moment she saw his grinning face above an "Have you seen me?" ad. Bella remembered feeling a strange sense of irony as she stared at him smiling at her: a ray of sunshine smothered by grainy photo editing and muted black-and-white.

An eclipse.

"Well Jake, I guess you're right...one way or another." She had mumbled absent-mindedly.

"Of course." A smug voice replied somewhere from above, or behind, or within.

A short snort ballooned from somewhere below her stomach and burst forth in a strange boisterous guffaw. After that, the laughter came out in violent torrents, her whole body rendered epileptic from the force. She laughed at the irony of it all, laughed at the way her life is so unbelievably melodramatic, laughed at the pathetic tangle that three hearts can make of so many lives—she laughed until she doubled over in pain and collapsed onto Charlie's porch, hurling the entire contents of her stomach between her bruised knees. It was only later that she realized that the ad she was gripping moments before had slipped down while she lost her balance and now laid buried under her vomit, only the audacious print "Have you seen me?" still visible. An ugly epitaph too bold to be erased.

"Typical of you Bells. Break my heart, then throw up all over me. You sure know how to make it dramatic." The voice jested. Bella remembered opening her mouth to let out another raucous laugh, but only a ghost of a sound escaped her parched throat, a mutated noise that hovered somewhere between a moan and a whimper. It was then that Charlie scooped her up from her own pool of vomit, and the days started to bleed into one another, all eclipsed in a muted black-and-white.

No, none of that mattered now.

What does matter, however, is the fact that she spent almost four years convincing herself that she left her past behind that day she hugged Charlie goodbye in the dead of the night, left her ring along with the charm bracelet of a wolf and a heart in an envelope atop her desk, and sped down the Interstate. The crunch of concrete beneath her truck was the only real thing for her in the next three months. She let the roaring mechanical beast engulf her and trampled all that tied her to Forks, to love, and most importantly, to a Bella too weak, too vain, and too selfish to be trusted with anyone's heart, even her own. She finally settled in Boston as the truck sputtered to a stop in a nearby town one late night in October. It was as good a reason to stay as any, Bella decided as she sold her ancient road companion to a man looking for some scrap metal, all the while trying to fight the thought of a oil streaked boy who would have demanded that he could fix it, that it just needed new plugs or filter replacements or oil changes or whatever the hell that was needed for these things to work. No, there was no fixing of anything that night. Instead, she wandered down the deserted main street of a town called Randolph, settled in a small motel, took the bus to Boston the next day in a catatonic daze, and started her new life. Her new self.

Ever since then, she never spoke to or heard from anyone in La Push, the sanctuary that she so thoroughly destroyed and then purged herself of. Never, that is, until Emily called. That was 3 weeks ago, and somehow, between awkward conversations skirting around neutral topics like Boston's obsession with clam chowder and Emily's new flower garden, Bella had agreed to come back to La Push to attend a wedding, of all things. Damn Emily, her easy manners, and stealthily instilled guilt.

Bella cursed under her breath as a loud bang reverberated from inside the tiny bungalow waking her up from her reverie. She unconsciously took a few steps back to hide herself in the shadows casted by the late evening light, temporarily forgetting that she was in the presence of mythical creatures whose eyes can see through such flimsy disguise.

It seems lady luck is smiling down at her tonight, however, as whoever made that noise is already hastily retreating back to the party, as evident by the slam of a screen door.

"Okay Isabella Swan," Bella sternly spoke, imitating the tone her mother used on the rare occasion that Bella is the child and Renee is the adult. "You can do this. You are an adult, for God's sake! Just step in there, say congratulations, shake some hands, eat some grub, stick by Charlie's side, be inconspicuous for an hour or two, then leave! No big deal."

Bella sigh. _No big deal…right, and Moby Dick was just another whale._ She thought glumly.

After a few minutes, she was able to scrap up enough courage to take several determined steps through the tiny wooden gate and around the garden pathway to the back. Once she rounded the familiar wooden stairway, she could see that the party was in full swing.

The backyard was beautifully lit by strings of rice paper lantern weaving through handsome vines of forest pine and wildflowers. One impossibly huge wooden table occupied the far right side of the yard and boasted most, if not all, of Emily's (and some of Sue's, by the look of the homemade bread and quiches) delicious recipes. Two 3-tiered cake oozing with more kinds of berries than Bella can count is the centerpiece of the feast. The rest of the yard was littered with mismatched tables and chairs that, Bella deduced, came along with the guests. Sure enough, a quick scan revealed a jolly (and slightly red ) Charlie nursing a beer and a plate of spareribs while perching on their kitchen stool, animatedly chatting to Billy. Bella's eyes skipped over Billy's face as she scanned the rest of the crowd for other familiar but less painful pieces of the puzzle. Billy Black resides too close to the abyss that Bella have been carefully navigating around all these years. Facing him would only bring trouble. That was the precise reason why she refused to accompany Charlie earlier in the evening, as he had suggested, and made him promise that he would not tell anyone about her return. It was easy enough to get him to agree, since after all, he did not want to meet the ghosts lurking behind his daughter's carefully blank eyes and easy smile.

It seems Emily also kept her word about keeping Bella's return a secret. It was obvious that none of the mythical creatures milling about knew about her presence amongst them despite their keen senses. Everyone seems to be basking in the glow of the evening, too high on love, friendship, family, and laughter to notice a piece of their past nervously wrecking havoc on Emily's newly sprung daisies. Even if they did catch a whiff of a girl they knew a long time ago, they would have undoubtledly accounted it to the fact that Charlie was amongst them and it was probably the ghost of a wedding that almost happened that haunted their steps, not the real almost bride snooping around a porch corner.

Smoothing her dress for the hundredth time that evening, Bella drew a deep breath and stepped forward towards the crowd. Before she could greet anyone, however, her eyes snapped onto the sight of a familiar russet back standing not too far from the table where Sam Uley and Emily tended. He was leaning on one leg as the other tapped lightly to the music blasting from the house. He seemed to be in deep conversation with someone in front of him, his neck beaded with sweat from the uncharacteristically warm night (and the fact that he had to be fully dressed for the occasion, Bella guessed). When he threw back his head in laughter, Bella sucked in air violently at the shock of memories echoing through her body. Her breath quickened considerably as if her body was trying to make up for lost time by desperately stealing whatever mirth he was dispelling. Her eyes anchored on the hollow of his neck, the slope of his shoulder, the line down his back, and the way his fingers wound itself around paler, smaller hands as they rub hypnotic patterns inside colder palms. She drank it all in hungrily like a man gasping for salvation before crossing the Stix. Her whole body tingled with the torturous awareness of that russet warmth. Somewhere back in time, it had once belonged to her.

Belonged. Bella choked at her own thought. Belonged, because right now, the hand that he is holding is not hers.

Her eyes snapped to the offending hand and the person it belongs to. She vaguely registered cropped sandy hair and a wide smile before turning on her heels to run. Promises and new Bellas be damned, courage is a superfluous commodity in the face of imminent asphyxiation.

Before she could make it out of the gate, however, a pair of large warm hands gripped her arms firmly.

Too warm.

Bella tried to gasp, but she realized she had already stopped breathing some time ago. She yanked blindly, trying to free herself from the offending grip before she loses both her pathetic heart and her fragile dignity.

"Bella, stop." A voice sounded from behind her. Familiar, but not as painful.

It was then that she finally turned, and stared into the worried gaze of Embry Call.

"E-Embry?"

He smiled as she stopped struggling. "Yea, I figured you were going to kill yourself if you ran like that, and Emily would hate to have a corpse lying in her tomato patches."

Bella offered a weak smile.

"Besides, what happened to being an adult and staying inconspicuous?"

Bella's eyes snapped to focus on Embry's face, her expression petrified in horror.

Embry chuckled again as he pulled her to the front porch, and handed her a can of soda.

She stared at his proffered hand like it held a poisonous fruit coaxed down by serpentine tongues. She wanted to scream at him for such a gesture; wanted to throw it back at him, and tore away from there before the black poison consumes her. But Bella is no longer a girl of red streaked anger, deep blues, and hysterical neons; she spent her time in Boston perfecting the art of pastels, and so after a second's pause, she painted her face in calm cornflower and thanked him for his consideration.

The fact that it was warm to the touch, however, was not something she was prepared for.

Somewhere inside Bella, an urn the color of deep warm russet crashed from sepulchral shelves and out spilled a garage, car oil, Bruce Springsteen, geography lessons, a wide infectious grin, and the sound of _Bells, honey, Bells_. Staring at Embry and his confused smile, Bella couldn't help but whimper silently that it was all so familiar, but yet_ so wrong._

"Relax, I didn't hear you from all the way back there. I was the last one out patrolling, and heard your little mantra on my way back." He explained, mistakenly attributing the quickly smothered whirls of panic in her eyes to the fact she might've unwittingly announced herself in an embarrassing way.

"Oh." Was all Bella managed as she toyed with her soda can, mentally sweeping away shards of broken pottery.

After a moment of silence where both seems to be lost as to what comes next, Embry nodded at the can in her hands and asked, "Want me to open that for you?"

She snapped out of her thoughts, and shook her head vehemently. "It's Pandora's." She stated, and then set the offending can down as far away from her as possible.

Embry knitted his eyebrows together and stared up at the sky, now a dark velvet. Bella took the opportunity to study his face. He must be 20 this year, she thought absent-mindedly. Embry Call has always been a bit on the lean side, and although the werewolf must pulse just as strongly beneath his light cocoa skin as any of the others, Bella never remembered him shaking in uncontrollable anger or keeping a careful mask of practiced serenity. He seems to possess a natural harmony that calmed even the beast roaring inside his veins. That, in addition to his unobtrusive demeanor, gave this boy a quiet mysterious grace that soothed Bella immensely.

"Pandora didn't know what was in the box."

Bella blinked, surprised that he was pondering about what she said after all that time.

"Well.." She mused. "I don't know what's back there either. " _Except that he's holding another girl's hand._ Bella finished silently, and grimaced inwardly at how juvenile it sounded.

Embry turned to look at her, his lips pursed together in thought as he contemplates her expression, several warring emotions flitted across his eyes. The sudden attention made her shift under his gaze.

"I'll say you know a thing or two if you showed up here with a present." He finally chose to say, gesturing at the forgotten powder blue package next to her.

"Yea, Emily invited me. Something about a wedding."

"Jared's and Kim's."

Bella nodded.

After that, both of them sat in companionable silence as Bella timed her heartbeat, willing it to return to normal. What she didn't know, however, was that the boy next to her was also concentrating on that same rhythmic sound, relief pooling inside him as a consequence of supernatural telepathy with a certain wolf whose paws once pounded through the forests of La Push and Forks to the rhythm of that same beat. A wolf that used to count down the days until the moment the rhythm stops, never suspecting that the pain would snap his heart strings first before the numbers ran out. It was the brotherhood of the pack that allowed Embry to learn the preciousness of that sound, the stain of a friend's love that lent him compassion to sit with the girl who brought down Atlas, and the ache of a fatherless childhood to know that pain is a blind raging demon more dangerous and persistent than any leech he had ever encountered. And this girl sitting next to him, with her carefully painted calmness and unopened soda, was fighting a monster of her own. He could never rage at her like Paul had those years Jacob was gone, nor could he quietly dread and mourn like Sam. For Embry, Bella Swan was just another human being, and to live (whether you are breathing or not), he learned, is to cause pain, to be in pain, and eventually, to let it go. So when he saw her silhouette from the forest, Embry knew that it was time to put to rest the monsters created years ago. It was time to let go.

After finishing up both his and her soda, Embry stood up abruptly, and headed back towards the side gate.

"Bella Swan," he called back, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, eyes watching the sky. "you're coming."

It wasn't a question, and something about that comforted her despite the imminent plunge into abyss. She brushed herself off surreptitiously, and trotted after Embry to catch up.


	2. Weddings and Cigarettes

A/N: Thank you for all your kind reviews. The ending of this chapter might be a bit confusing, but things will clear up as the story develops. I apologize for the slow progression of the story, but things should be happening soon enough.

* * *

As they approach her old spot beside the back porch, Bella's hands clenched at the memory of what drove her away not less than an hour ago. She slowed down considerably.

Noticing the change in pace, Embry glanced around to gauge at her expression, and decided to take matters into his own hand.

He grabbed her fist, smoothed out the tightly wound fingers without much trouble, and laced his own with hers. He quietly chuckled at the sound she made—a cross between a surprised gasp and a sigh of relief—and mentally noted that Bella Swan was much more interesting when you caught her by surprise.

He was relieved that she's too shocked and worried to put up much of a fight, and that gave him enough time to drag her towards Charlie.

"The prodigal daughter returns." Embry announced in somewhat poor taste to the two men before him.

Charlie glanced up to see his daughter's tiny frame hovering somewhere behind the Call boy, not missing the fact that their hands were tightly intertwined, or rather, she was offering her limb like it is separate from her body while the boy tried to make the fact that she was a dead weight he lugged across the yard as imperceptible as possible. Charlie raised his eyebrows.

"Bella, the party started hours ago."

"I was distracted…" She seemed to mumble as she ducked out from behind Embry to add to the pile of gifts behind Charlie. Gathering up her nerves, she turned to her right and looked Billy Black in the eyes, while smiling as naturally as possible under the circumstances.

"Hi Billy. How are you these days?" She greeted lamely.

To her surprise, he smiled back. "Well the wheels need a little oil and the fridge needs some stocking, but other than that, I'm the same as always. How's Boston treating you? Heard 'bout that freak snow storm in April—it had Charlie boy here in a right frenzy."

Bella grinned at the memory. "Yea, the phone lines around my area crashed."

"Damn old cities." Charlie grumbled.

Billy let out a boisterous laugh as he handed his friend another beer. At that moment, a voice called out from across the lawn.

"Yo Embry man! Where the hell have you been? Patrol ended hours ago, got lost?"

"Or maybe just lucky in the forest. Who's the lady friend??" Another added.

"Hey hey, if anyone's getting some today, it's me alright?? It's my damn wedding day!!" An indignant voice called out from somewhere near the food table, followed quickly by a loud sound of plastic trays hitting skulls.

Embry cocked his head around to grin at his pack. "I was having a discussion on the importance of symbolism."

The answer earned him several snorts and raised eyebrows.

"Charlie, Billy, I'll see you two around." Embry nodded at the men before turning to Bella. "Come on Pandora, time to check out that box!" He announced with a sly grin before twirling her around, causing a low hush to fall through the crowd across the yard.

"BELLA SWAN?!!" Quil exclaimed after a few moments of utter silence.

Bella can only nod weakly, her free hand hover dumbly somewhere between a wave and a salute. She settled on tucking her hair behind her ears instead.

"Shit, I can't believe it." Paul groaned, earning a glare from Emily who was already moving towards her with a wide smile on her face.

The rest of the pack watched mutely as Emily took Bella's other hand and guided her towards them, hauling a carefully expressionless Embry along. As their human chain snaked through the throngs of people milling about, Bella nervously glanced at the faces around her, and noted, with a hint of relief, that Jacob and his companion is nowhere in sight. She could face the pack easier this way.

"I invited Bella." Emily said cheerfully in answer to all the silent questions passing through the group of overgrown men. Her words, although spoken lightly, had all the force of a gauntlet.

"I agreed." Kim piped up from beside Jared, smiling apologetically at Bella.

Bella smiled back, glad that she had the bride's consent. "Congratulations." She said in a steady voice.

"Thank you." Kim answered softly, her eyes dancing in liquid bliss. Jared echoed his wife's sentiment in a warm smile, and Bella let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Love doesn't have to be a sparkling diamond anvil, crashing through blindly, creating holes and crumbling hearts, Bella mused. No, in the right hands, it is quiet smiles and simple vows; it is the pink of her cheeks and the sparkle in his eye; it is everything that Bella once thought too simple to be forever. She was glad there are people who got it right.

Formalities aside, however, the rest of the pack seemed to be lost as to what they should be doing in light of her sudden appearance.

"Well regardless, you're here so let's get you some food!" Seth Clearwater interjected when the silence threatened to overwhelm. He grinned at her from beside Quil and bounced up from his seat with all the energy of an overexcited puppy.

Bella nodded, noting that it would be better to be occupied with something, rather than being the sole target of the attention of a group of werewolves. It helped that Seth was still the same as always, all boyish grins and bouncing dark curls. She was halfway turned to follow him to the food table when a low voice sounded through the crowd behind her.

"You're back…?"

Bella didn't need to turn to know whose voice that was; the tingling in her spine, the sudden dryness of her mouth, and the speed of her heartbeat were clue enough. She tightened her grip on Embry's hand reflexively, and felt that he was tense also. A quick glance back revealed the reason why.

Jacob's eyes were fixed on their intertwined hands, his face deceptively calm.

_Deadly calm._ Embry would reflect in hindsight.

Bella quietly disengage her hand from Embry's, and turned around to face Jacob.

"And so are you." She replied softly, her eyes staring steely into his onyx ones.

Jacob stared at those too-wide eyes looking for the glitter of unshed tears threatening to flood his senses or whorls of grief that grip his heart (always too tightly), but all he saw was an impenetrable brown; a brick wall that he could no longer scale.

"Bells?" A hand wrapped itself around her forearm, effectively ending their silent war. Bella turned to see Charlie looking at her closely.

"I was just about to head out; early morning tomorrow. I know you just got here, but seeing as how you got in this morning, I thought you might want to come back early to get some rest."

Bella knew that Charlie, being a man of few words, was extending her an awkward olive branch to protect her from a confrontation she was dreading, and if she was being honest with herself, Bella was tempted to come home with him. But she knew that facing Jacob was not only something she needed to but desperately wanted to do—even if she had to play nice with blondie.

"Actually I—"

"I can take her home afterwards." A voice next to her interrupted.

Three heads whipped around to see Embry with an easy smile on his face and three plates piled high with food in his large hands. One of which he handed to Bella without so much as a glance. She was too taken aback to do much but take the offered plate and stare.

Charlie nodded, giving a Bella a slightly bewildered look, which she returned, before bidding everyone good night.

Satisfied with the answer, Embry ambled over to the nearest empty table, and plunked down on one chair before pointing his fork at the opposite seat.

"Saved a spot for ya." He grinned at a dumbfounded Bella before digging enthusiastically into his food, seemingly oblivious at the incredulous stares that he was receiving.

Bella, for her part, was stunned with confusion, but found herself shuffling towards the empty chair anyway, despite the warning signs from her singing nerves, pleading her to stop before she becomes the maiden sacrifice for a werewolf ritual she was unaware of.

"What are you doing?" Jacob gritted from behind.

Bella opened her mouth, but for the life of her, could not formulate an intelligent answer besides from 'walking'. Luckily, it seems the question was not directed at her as Embry surfaced from his plate, and offered and answer that was equally trite.

"Eating."

Jacob glared. "No, I meant why did you offer to _take her home_?" Every syllable seemed to be forced, as if someone had a Heimlich grip on him and was squeezing out each word while he heaves them on the floor, wriggling like angry serpents.

Bella flinched at the infliction in Jacob's tone, and felt hot embers of anger igniting within her despite the fact that the same question was tittering on the tip of her tongue.

Embry shrugged, his face still wearing that easy smile. "Just something I could do, I guess. Didn't really think about it much Jake." He paused, his lips pursed together in a look of contemplation that Bella recognized from earlier. "If you don't mind, why don't you take her? I'm kind of tired from the patrol anyway." Grinning amicably at everyone, Embry stood up and brought his empty plates inside.

Bella sucked in a breath, and could almost hear the _snap_ vibrating through the air.

Within minutes, Embry had successfully planned, executed, and lured both Jacob and Bella into a sticky sweet trap that promises no escape. He knew that Jacob would never refuse, and Bella, for all her practiced composure, was still as clumsy as ever. She is incapable of backing out of this gracefully, and anything beyond her honed tranquility would shatter the precarious courage that she wielded in order to be here tonight. Even if they had somehow weaseled their way out of this, driving Bella home would have opened a cornucopia of opportunities that Embry would be too glad to explore. Either way, he would get what he wanted eventually.

He might not be the fastest, strongest, or wildest of the pack, but he is the truest hunter amongst them all. Once Embry Call sets his trap, the course of the game is set, and he rarely loses sight of his prey. Despite sharing the same consciousness, the pack has yet to learn how Embry's cunning wit always seems to elude them, even when he exhibits his mind freely.

"It's something that runs in his veins." Sam had once offered as a way of explanation.

"What? Brain juice instead of blood?" Quil had jested in reply, but the pack had accepted the answer even before they knew what it was.

It is just another unexplained part of who they are—wolves and men. It is why imprinting works and the scars on Emily's face and how 13 year olds can be six feet tall and Leah's howls in the dead of the night and Jacob's love for Bella. There never were any explanations or excuses for what they are; existence is an exclamation point, a period, an ellipse even, but never a question mark. They've learned long ago that question marks are nooses, ready to choke them in their hesitation. Being a wolf means power, and being a pack means embracing and melding so that individual insecurities become group strengths. It was how they live and love together without tearing each other apart.

It was part of the reason why Jacob allowed Embry to walk away without tearing into him, to see what gave him such audacity to play them like chess pieces. The other part of the reason was now sitting in Embry's empty spot, picking at her food while Emily and Kim took turns to ask questions about Bella's life in Boston. Jacob caught snippets of the conversation over the din of the party, and savored each piece of information as if it was food thrown to a dying man.

School. Part-time jobs. Single. Roommate. History major. Coffee shop. Snow. _Graduation. Single_. Single. Single.

The word bounces around his skull like a propelled jet engine; his brain incapable of processing any other thought besides from those two syllables.

Single.

Not engaged.

Not married.

Alive.

Single.

The word ripples down his spine and melts on his tongue like sweet amber. Two insignificant syllables that tear apart a sea inside him and pour out all that had been drowning him for the past years.

It was all he could do to not pick her up from her seat and shake the answer out of her for all the whys and the hows that plague his mind as soon as she uttered that word. It took Herculean effort to allow Emily and Kim to regale her in chitchat, as if this was any other wedding, as if she did not just waltz back into his life hand in hand with one of his best friends after being absent for almost 4 years. It was almost impossible to remain a stoic version of himself while the real Jacob—her Jacob—was bubbling just beneath the surface, straining to grab hold of those pale small hands and feel the pulse that feeds into his own.

However, the image of the steely look in her eyes earlier reeled him back, reminding him that Jacob Black might still be the same underneath all the grime of bitterness, but that might not be the case with Bella Swan. The Bella that he knew, even during those zombie months after that leech left her, was never unreadable. She never built walls, but preferred to break dams instead. He was used to the force of the Nile releasing its fury from her eyes, and learned to tease a weak smile or even laughter out of those mournful pools. But this wall, this was new, and he wasn't sure what he was more afraid of: discovering the reason behind those walls, or the Bella who no longer wanted him poking around in her wounds. It was unchartered territory, and he could almost laugh at his naïve self who had declared so passionately once that he _knew_ her. _Always_.

Youth holds such blasphemous and foolish things as monoliths.

It shocks him to realize that though he ceased being young a long time ago while gasping his way towards surface in an ocean of spell bounding grief, it was this strange new uncertainty in her that forces him to finally face adulthood for what it truly is, a mine of doubt and damning hesitation.

At least one thing remains true: she will always be the moving force behind his happiness, his growth, and his downfall.

_Well that's damn comforting_. Jacob grimaced.

He snapped out of his thoughts as he felt someone's hand intertwining with his. He looked down and saw quizzical grey eyes looking up at him. It took him several seconds to recognize who it is that he's gazing at.

"Tammy. Hi." He greet with a bewildered smile.

She giggled. "Hi to you too silly. Forgot I was here?" She joked, intentionally arching her eyebrows in a comical way that always made him laugh.

He smiled down at her and gave her hand a quick squeeze. "Of course not."

A soft snort arose from somewhere to his left, and he looked up to see Leah smirking at him, her eyes glinting tauntingly. He knew that the sound was too soft to reach Tammy's ears, but scowled at Leah anyway and tightened his hold on the oblivious girl's hand.

This only earned him a raised eyebrow and a haughty look that seemed to say "What? Got something to prove?"

"Bitch." Jacob muttered under his breath, sure that she could hear it.

Leah only laughed, and disappeared somewhere inside the house while pulling a pack Marlboro out of her jean pocket. Through the kitchen window, Jacob caught Embry taking a swig of his flask. He raises the container in mock salute when he realizes Jacob was watching, and then sauntered deeper into the house.

Jacob tousled his hair in frustration, and silently muttered "This is going to be a long night."

* * *

Bella weaved in and out of the crowd, eyes straining to catch hold of nothing in particular. She had spent a good part of the night being passed along the friendlier portion of the wedding guests, bounced around from one polite conversation to the next, her mouth frozen in a strange half-smile while reciting the perfunctory answers that flutter about uselessly, facilitating the saving lie that to communicate, all one has to do is to scramble a handful of vocabulary and regurgitate the same inane fact in a million different ways. At the moment, Bella couldn't care less about what was being said as her eyes constantly flitted around, trying to spot a familiar swish of a pony tail or tanned russet arms. She didn't know whether she was seeking him out to talk to him or locating him as a way to the pinpoint all the corners and nooks of Emily's yard that she should avoid. In fact, ever since seeing Jacob again, Bella have been steadily losing grip on her mentality. The whole night, her mind, body, and heart have been contorting in onto themselves and then detonating forcefully in opposite directions, creating nauseating vibrations within herself as her needs, wants, senses, and thoughts all splay about her like some repulsive scene from a horror flick. It didn't help the situation any when she spotted, out of the corner of her eyes, Jacob being hoisted from one crowd to the next by the statuesque blonde called Tammy. Finally sick of the internal fireworks and emotional bruising, Bella excused herself from a few elderly women discussing tribal traditional ceremonies and furtively slink through the thinning crowds, hoping to make her escape as unnoticeable as possible. She had no such luck however, as a glowering Leah Clearwater glared at her from the front porch. Despite herself, Bella froze under such a disdainful gaze, and could only stare back, her eyes wide in confusion and apprehension.

Leah Clearwater was never an easy person to deal with. An _angry_ Leah Clearwater was something even the best hell-raising army the Volturi could conjure up should be wary of.

Apparently, Bella passed some kind of test by returning her gaze because Leah eventually averted her olive eyes back to the inky sky. After a pause, not sure if she should say anything, Bella began moving towards the road again.

"Sit." Leah commanded before Bella could go further than a few steps.

Bella did as she was told, feeling as if the letters itself were attached to threads that control her very limbs. She idly wondered if it was the wolf or the woman in Leah that lent her the ability to pound each spoken word into the very marrow of your bone, lassoing and choking and branding your senses until they are no longer yours to control.

_Whatever it is, Sam needs to take notes._ Bella mused silently.

She looked at Leah expectantly, waiting for some kind of verbal lashing, but when nothing but silence answered her, she began to slip into a sense of déjà vu, noting that not too long ago, she was sitting in the very same position with Embry Call.

_Except there weren't so many cigarette butts here then_. Bella noted, pushing the stubs around idly with the tips of her shoes.

"Want one?" Leah offered, extending an almost empty pack out to Bella.

"No thanks, I'm more of a coffee kind of girl."

A snort and then a quick flick of a lighter.

Bella watches the smoke twirl against the dark silhouette of the forest, the smell of tobacco bringing back memories of late nights in Harvard Square with an empty head and the sound of bluesy jazz filtering through the heavy wooden doors of anonymous bars. A platitude of faces and names flashes through her mind, all lost in staccato sensations of alcohol induced haze and a loneliness she can't place. The smoke rises and separates into gossamer thin threads, slowly dissolving into the sky.

"Maybe just a drag."

Leah handed over her cigarette wordlessly.

Bella's lips clasp onto the slightly moist paper and her eyes close as she breathes in. The smoke teases out all the coils within her, and as she release it, the coils spring up and spread themselves all around, unfolding like butterflies from their cocoon and quietly dissolve into the night, leaving behind a dull hollow echo.

Another dark nameless night.

Bella released a sigh as she handed the cigarette back to Leah.

The other girl raises her eyebrows in question.

"I'm…" Bella paused, fishing for the right words. "nights—they're difficult."

Leah snorts. "Doesn't help when there's a damn wedding."

Bella smiles. "Or Nate King Cole crooning about forever."

"Yea? I thought you were into all that forever shit."

"Can I have another drag? Thanks."

The butterflies tickle her rib cages; all other sensations are but a dull echo. "I'm sitting here aren't I?" She answered after a while.

Leah tore her eyes away from the sky long enough to give Bella a sidelong glance. _No_, she confirmed, _the girl did not flinch_.

"Who are you anyway? What happened to little miss I'm-too-torn-up-inside-to-give-a-shit-about-anyone-else's-feelings?"

Bella gave Leah back her cigarette. "I don't know." She offered honestly, her eyes meeting Leah's for the second time that night.

After a moment of silent exchange, Leah shrugs, and then wordlessly returns her gaze to the sky. Bella took this as her cue, and makes her way down the steps once more.

"Thanks for the cigarette."

Leah smirked. "Shouldn't you be taking her home Jakey boy? It's late."

Bella heard an angry grunt before seeing Jacob round the corner of the unlit porch. He gave Leah a stern look before shifting his gaze to Bella, signaling her to follow him. Leah watches them walk away together in silence, the night quickly engulfing them in her shadowy embrace.

The roar of an engine signaled their exit onto the dark road.

Leah put out her last cigarette on the weathered wood, and catches, out of the corner of her eyes, the hunched back of a man dragging his way towards his pick-up, his feet headed towards a cold attic room infested with the stink of mothballs and regrets, while his shadow longingly clutches at the place that he once called home. Sensing her gaze, he turned around slightly and caught her eyes.

Irises the color of warm coffee pours into her own. Leah started, as if to walk towards him, but seeing the glint of familiar fire in his eyes, she stopped short and averted her gaze.

Too much. Too late.

He turns around once again, and not long after, another engine purrs as it makes its down the road. Leah remembered to breath only when the night is once again returned to unadulterated silence.

She pretends that the sting in her eyes is another effect of the tobacco and too late nights.

Somewhere inside the house, a too cheerful Emily Young is trying not to notice the piercing glare of a hole that is shaped like her ex-fiancé, and the way Embry Call sits apart, his hand cradling a bottle of whiskey.

Weddings are hard, and nights are haunted.


	3. A Familiar Stranger

A/N: Sorry I took so long to update. Grad school is hard work -_-. I know this is a sorry excuse of a chapter, being so short and uneventful and terribly written. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me. Atleast the wedding is officially over right? It might seem a little weird, because believe it or not, this is my first time writing Jacob. haha I'm trying to work out my own version of the grown up Jacob, and well...I'll work out the kinks eventually. Sorry if he's a bit disjointed here. Anyway, please enjoy. As always thank you everyone who reviewed my story, and anyone who liked it enough to come back for more.

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"You're not driving the Rabbit anymore."

Bella instantly bit her lips. She didn't know how the words managed to escape without filtering through her brain first, and it certainly wasn't what she wanted to open with.

"The garage flooded. It was scrap metal by the end of it all." Jacob replied, his voice strained and thin.

"Oh."

Failing to find any scrap of conversation to pick up on, Bella let her gaze wander over to the open window, the whipping chill brought back a familiar Boston comfort. She was always a bit cold there, and it became a strange kind of cocoon. People don't stop to chat or peer into each other's soul in the cold. They merely brush one another as their heavy set boots carry them past each other, ski caps and scarves and steamy breaths muffle serendipitous chance encounters, reducing it to a rushed echo between crinkling parkas and mumbled apologies.

Bella was safe in that blur of anonymity.

She remembers the last time she saw her truck from the hub of a yellow cab: a rusty and tired red dragging across route 28. Something inside it moaned as the tow truck turned the last corner, and Bella desperately clawed at the stray thought that leaked through her quarantined memory: _It sounds like a wolf's howl. _

She wants to ask Jacob if the Rabbit had made a similar sound while it drowned, but they were no longer _that_ Jacob and Bella.

_JakeandBells_ is in the junk yard along with what remains of their maimed cars.

As if on cue, Jacob reached over and fiddled with a series of knobs, sending a cacophonous clutter of music into the hub of the pickup. The message was clear.

_**I don't want to talk. **_

_Well that put a nail in it_. Bella thought.

As the road spools out in front of them like an ominous black warning, Bella wondered if it ever took this long to get home from Emily's house. Even with the windows wide open, and the chilly night air lashing violently against her cheeks, she couldn't fight the warmth radiating from the man sitting mere inches away from her.

It was terrifying.

Sitting next to Jacob was nothing like sitting next to Embry. She knew that they measure the same body temperature, but it was useless trying to convince her brain that, because right now, her left side was _burning_. She leaned further out the window, trying to regain that familiar chill and keep as much distance between them as possible.

"Stop doing that."

Bella started.

"What?"

"Looking like you're going to jump out of the car and make for it any minute now. I don't feel like spending my night scrapping you off the asphalt."

She scowled. "Don't worry, I won't be causing you any trouble. I'll make sure to find another way to die that's _convenient_ for you."

"_**What**_." Jacob growled through gritted teeth.

"I said—"

"I know what you said. It wasn't a question." His eyes were burning through her. Bella vaguely registered that they were no longer moving, and she would remember later that she did indeed recognize the silhouette of Charlie's house hovering somewhere behind Jacob's back. For now though, all she could do was stare back at him, her anger exploding from all sides and the tension of the whole evening crashes down upon them like blades.

"I always knew you were _insensitive_ to my troubles Bella Swan but I never thought you were cruel."

Bella's fists were so tightly wound, she could taste the blood her fingernails were drawing from her palms.

"Cruel? Did I ignore you the whole night? Did I march around the damn party _glaring_ at you from behind while drapping myself around some floozy? Was I the one who looked like she would rather swim through a pool of needles than drive you home tonight??"

Bella knew that her reasons were flimsy at best, but she was livid and didn't care whether she made sense right now or not.

Jacob snorted. "Oh I'm sorry, but I hope you understand. All this time I thought you were _dead_. It was quite a trip trying to wrap my mind around the fact that you're not. What? Did you forget to call?"

Bella wanted to wipe that sneer off his face. It was aggravating, and does not belong to the Jake she used to know. "Who the hell was I supposed to call Jake? _You _ran off on me, remember?"

Jacob couldn't believe his ears. He felt all the fight drain from him and the floodgates the he tried desperately to keep shut the whole night burst forth.

"There was nothing left to stay for. You _broke_ me." He replied quietly, his gaze not quite meeting hers anymore.

There it was at last. Their dizzying dance came to a halt, and as always, it was Jacob who laid it bare first. Bella sucked in a breath and tried to ignore the streams of hot tears scarring her face. She knew that it was her who needed to explain, she was the one who was supposed to apologize, but throughout the whole evening, he was making it impossible for her to talk to him.

Bella snorted inwardly. _I should've known that our first conversation would've been an all out shouting match. And then we would proceed to inflict grand emotional scars on each other. Atleast that hasn't changed._

One look at the man sitting inches away from her, however, and Bella could no longer find any amusement in the situation. In a single moment, his hardened anger had melted into liquid pain, and it was suffocating her to look at him bleeding from wounds that she had created.

Bella reached out to gently cup his face, her fingers trembling slightly.

"Oh Jake. Honey I'm so sorry." When it came down to it, however, Bella realized she didn't have the words.

She never had the right words for Jacob.

"I so…I wanted to so much. Wanted to see you. I have things I want to say to you—_need _to say to you. I-I want to tell you what happened, and where I've been and I want to know where you've been and I want to be able to touch you again without shaking like this. I want to stop hurting you so much--But oh god Jake…when you left…..you..you broke me too."

Her hand fell limply down at her sides, the words robbing her of all the energy she mustered up for tonight.

It was silent in the car after that, and all they could do was stare at each other. The years of dancing around one another and the thousands of conversations between them diminished suddenly in this new found honesty, and they were both mystified of what should come next. What happens after you've flayed yourself open for another person?

Jacob replayed what Bella said over in his mind, meticulously trying to decode every nuance, every hesitation, every diction until all he felt was confusion. How did he break when she was never his to break? What happened in all those years that led them here, now, in front of each other, so honest, yet still so lost to one another? How do you bridge a gap that you can't find?

He needed to know. He still wanted to fix this.

"Is something the matter?" A voice called from behind Jacob.

They jolted out of their trance and turned to see Charlie standing under the luminescent porch light.

"It's late." He stated before returning back into the house, leaving the front door slightly ajar.

Bella returned her bewildered gaze back to Jacob, and suddenly, his face broke into a small grin.

"Jesus Bella. You're emotionally draining." He chuckled, running his hand through his loosened locks.

"Wha—" Bella sputtered. "You're aggravating!"

Jacob laughed. "Just like old times."

Bella grinned back. "Just like old times." She parroted.

"So I think we've gotten sufficient emotional scarring for one encounter, what do you say we call it a night?"

Bella nodded, but didn't make any effort to leave the truck. She chewed on her bottom lip nervously, uncomfortable with the way he was willing to dismiss it so easily.

It was supposed to mean so much more.

"Bella?"

"Huh?"

"It's not over." Jacob raised his eyebrows comically, before offering her another melancholy smile.

Bella nodded, and reached over to squeeze his hands gingerly before clambering out of the truck.

"Hey Jake." Bella called out just before she ducked into the door.

He killed the engine as a sign that he heard her, and waited patiently.

"I don't know if I'm allowed to say this anymore but…I'm alive. I missed you."

Jacob felt his nerves relaxing into rivulets of honey as those words waltz around him.

Finally, something feels right.

"You're always allowed Bells. We're going to be okay." He reassured her, and watched gave him a small smile before closing the door behind her.

Jacob took a deep breath. _We're going to be okay_. He repeated before rumbling home in a truck filled with a past he couldn't forget and a future he might not be afraid of.


End file.
